The Shadow Mode Assessment Using Realistic Technologies for the National Airspace System (SMART-NAS) Test Bed is an air traffic simulation platform being developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The SMART-NAS Test Bed’s overarching purpose is to conduct high-fidelity, real-time, human-in-the-loop and automation-in-the-loop simulations of current and proposed future air traffic concepts for the United States’ Next Generation Air Transportation System called NextGen.

Specifically, SMART-NAS Test Bed (referred to as SNTB) is intended to enable simulations that are currently impractical or impossible for three major focus areas of NextGen research and development:

• Concepts across multiple operational domains such as gate-to-gate trajectory-based operations (TBO) concepts

• Concepts related to the seamless and widespread integration of new entrants into the National Airspace System (NAS) such as large and small unmanned aerial systems (UAS), on-demand urban air mobility vehicles, supersonic aircraft, and commercial space operations

• Real-time system-wide safety assurance technologies to allow safe, increasingly autonomous operations in conjunction with traditional manned operations